


everything changes but the moon stays the same

by jazzmckay



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Brief Daud/Outsider, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Misgendering, References to Animal & Human Experimentation, Trans Character, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 04:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10153934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzmckay/pseuds/jazzmckay
Summary: Daud is turned into a werewolf as a young man and somehow ends up with a much bigger pack than he ever expected.The werewhalers, through the years.Written for the kink meme.





	

**Author's Note:**

> kinkmeme prompt: 
> 
> Daud's motto of "I am wolf to man" has always made me think about the Whalers as a werewolf pack. Maybe the person who kidnapped Daud as a child was a werewolf and turned him, and once Daud arrives in Dunwall he starts building his own pack.

_Six years ago_

The two of them have been alone on the ship since the previous night, anchored just beyond the shore from where the old slaughterhouse and current whaler base is located. Billie had slept a lot through the night and into the morning, but now she sits at the ship’s bow, legs crossed underneath her, looking up at the midday sun.

Daud comes up behind her slowly, stepping lightly the way he would behind a target. He watches for the moment she notices him, new senses picking up on the sound sooner than she would have before. She looks over her shoulder to track his approach quicker than most do so soon after the bite, but she doesn’t comment on it, just turns her face back up to the sky.

“How is it?” Daud asks when he reaches her properly, standing next to her on the wooden deck of the ship.

“Everything smells like salt,” she says. “Sort of makes me feel like I’m going to be sick.”

At sea is far from the first choice Daud would make for turning new pack members, and he doesn’t envy those that have gone through it in the last few years. Their numbers have grown too much for them to be picky about where they set up base, and the small ship that came with the slaughterhouse is the only open, private space they have.

“It’s the middle of the day, but I can still feel the moon,” Billie adds when Daud doesn’t reply right away. “The pull of it is already there, my body knows I should be anticipating it.”

Daud nods. “With time, you’ll learn to control shifts even in the days surrounding the moon, not just the one night it’s at its fullest. The closer it is to full, the less effort it takes.”

“How long did it take you?” Billie asks, never one to be shy about asking Daud direct questions, even when they might be personal.

“A year or so.”

“I’m aiming for six months.”

Daud snorts. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Want to spar?”

“Yes,” Billie says immediately, pushing herself up from the deck and unsheathing her blade.

Daud waves it away. “Hands only.”

He knows Billie prefers working with a blade over hand to hand, but she learns quick and soon she’ll have claws, and greater strength and reflexes than she already did before.

The heightened senses always come first, or at least they’re the most noticeable first due to the overwhelming nature of it, everything sounding louder and smelling stronger and coming into sharper focus. Most of the whalers don’t settle into the new strength and agility until after their first shift when they’ve gone from human to wolf to the new balance between. Daud suspects Billie will already be tapping into it, not just because she’s a natural but because she wants it, and is willing to work to have it as soon as it’s available to her.

At first, Daud does nothing but dodge her as she takes swings and kicks at him. She has always been fast, just like him, but he’s faster. He sweeps side to side, jumps around her and watches her spin while managing to keep her balance perfectly, and waits for her to catch up.

“Being an assassin is about skill, being a wolf is about instinct,” he says when she starts to look frustrated by his antics. “Stop thinking like an assassin and listen to your instincts.”

She lunges straight at him, going from measured footwork to full body brute force in an instant. Daud catches her and directs her momentum to the side so he doesn’t bowl over completely, but he does stumble, releasing her in the process, and she comes at him again as soon as she gets her stance back.

Now Billie gets the hang of her new abilities and the fight becomes full contact, neither of them shying away from landing full hits or playing dirty. By the end of it, Billie is grinning madly and brimming with energy.

“That’s enough,” Daud finally says, cutting them off even with Billie’s disappointed look. “Rest until sundown, you won’t want to go into it tired.”

Billie grumbles but nods and moves to the top deck where she can feel the sun on her skin and the wind in her hair.

Daud watches her for awhile. She appears to be at peace, almost no nervousness to speak of. When she had followed him back to base over two years prior, she had been thin and dirty and looked ready to fight every moment of her life until it killed her or she came out on top. At eighteen, a master assassin and a new werewolf, she looks like she has found her place in the world. In the morning, Daud will give her a new coat. A red one, like his own.

He leaves her to herself for the rest of the day, letting her grow even more accustomed to the changes her body is going through on her own, and then finds her again at dusk.

“Are you ready?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

“Born ready,” she says. She has already removed her coat, shoes, and gear, left only in her trousers and undershirt. “Any last words of wisdom, old man?”

“Try not to fall overboard.”

Billie chuckles. “I’d be able to smell the brine on me for a week no matter how much I scrubbed, wouldn’t I?”

“Brine, blood, and shit. The strongest scents there are.”

“A werewolf’s true weakness.”

Jokes aside, Daud still does have advice. He likes his whalers to be as prepared for the moon and they are for a mission, likes them to know what they’re getting into and how to handle it in a way he never got himself. A lot of them complain about the age restriction he enforces for the bite, but it’s important that they’re as ready as he can make them beforehand.

“As much as the shift is about instinct, one thing that being an assassin and a werewolf have in common is control,” Daud tells her. “Just as much as you would on a mission, understand your capabilities, know your limits, and keep your wits about you.”

“Got it,” Billie says, and Daud thinks she really does, more than any of her brothers and sisters before her.

“I’ll give you privacy.”

She nods and he moves back into the cabin so they can they disrobe separately. From the cabin, Daud can’t see the sky change as the sun sets and the moon rises, but he can feel it, and he can hear Billie’s heartbeat accelerate as her body starts to change and the accompanying creaks of her shifting bones.

After all the years, Daud’s own change doesn’t hurt in an unbearable way nor does it take very long. He has perfected the ability to relax himself and let it wash over him like high tide and the ache in his stretching muscles grounds his mind, keeps him steady in his own thoughts instead of causing him to lose himself to wildness.

When he nudges the cabin door open again and moves out onto the deck, Billie has already turned to face his direction, her stance low and ready to spring into an attack.

Her coat is a thick, dark brown, and her eyes are gold, glittering in the moonlight. She holds her ground as he steps closer to her, but she eyes him warily, waiting for him to make any violent moves. She’s still in the stages of becoming aware of herself in this form and Daud is cautious with her, moving slowly and deliberately.

When they’re close enough, he presses his nose into the scruff of her neck, both placating her and showing her that they’re pack and he means no harm.

She growls at him briefly, but at his insistence, she hazards a sniff at him. He doesn’t know what she picks up, but it eases her. She bumps her own nose into him in return and Daud gives her awhile to familiarise herself with all the new things she’s experiencing.

Eventually, she grows bored of him and starts prowling around the ship, but there isn’t much to look at. Daud would prefer to offer his new pack members the same open forests that the most senior members got but this is safer and further away from any night guard patrols as they can get. These days, the city has grown and pushed out so far that rural areas are almost a thing of the past.

Daud approaches her again and butts his shoulder into her side, getting her complete attention. Again, she growls in warning but eases up when she realises that the nudges are playful. He leads her into a tussle that has her guarded at first, and then energetic, just like their spar earlier in the day.

He keeps her focused and moving, relearning herself and how to maneuver her new body with purpose. With heightened stamina, they keep it up well into the night, until Billie starts to slow and uses her weight to bring them both down on the deck in a pile of two.

In the last couple of hours before sunrise, they lay together quietly. Billie falls asleep, head on her paws and chest rising and falling slowly.

Reluctantly, Daud pulls away from her before the sun starts to lighten the sky and turn them human again. He goes back to the cabin, feeling worn out from an active night with a new wolf, but he keeps the need to sleep at bay so that he can set Billie’s new clothes out for her when he has proper use of his hands again.

After shifting back and changing into his uniform, he grabs a blanket for Billie, who is still curled up on the deck fast asleep. He averts his eyes as he drops it over her and lays the clothes, red coat on top, next to her. Then he returns to the cabin to wait until he hears her stirring.

It’s well into the morning when she finally wakes, and a short time after that before she starts getting up in earnest. Once she’s dressed, she seeks him out in the cabin.

“Morning, pack dad,” she greets, smirking as she leans up against the doorframe. She wears the red coat like a second skin.

Daud rolls his eyes. “Good to see you’re well rested enough to be a pain in the ass again so soon.”

“So this is why you took over a year to choose a new second, huh?” she says, gesturing down at herself.

“You earned it. I knew you would be ready for it.”

Billie adjusts her lapels thoughtfully. “I think it looks better on me than it does on you.”

“Careful your ego doesn’t outgrow it.”

She chuckles as Daud slips past her out onto the deck. They need to bring the anchor up and fall back into the pier. Rulfio is in charge back at base and Daud doesn’t like leaving just one of them to wrangle the others during the moon, even if Rulfio’s very good at it.

“How much do you remember?” he asks when she follows him and they start hoisting the anchor together.

“Most of it, I think,” she says. “It’s hazy at first and the last bit slipped away when I got tired, but the rest.”

“Good,” Daud says. It’s more than good, it’s impressive, and on par with Daud’s first full moons when he was fuelled so much by anger and the need to escape that his human mind took precedence over any other instinct. Luckily, he thinks Billie is fuelled simply by her own determination.

Together they bring the ship into harbour and walk up to the old slaughterhouse side by side, him and his second, to meet back up with the rest of the pack.

_Seventeen years ago_

The Fugue Feast has never interested Daud in the slightest. He hardly had the opportunity to pay the tradition any mind before travelling to Dunwall, and after that the anarchistic and carnal pleasures other people went wild for were simply not things he cared to partake in. He doesn’t care for mind-altering substances or sex and any murder or theft he might want to commit, he would just as easily do during the calendar year.

Unless he has a mission, he stays home and reads. The year before, Petro had stayed in with him while the rest of his pack took off to enjoy the festivities and Daud had no intention of telling them they couldn’t even if he wouldn’t join them.

If the universe demands balance, it serves to reason that one Fugue Feast in particular could end up being busy enough to make up for all the ones Daud missed, though Daud figures it has nothing to do with balance. This is just the way his life tends to go.

After a fortnight of the necessary preparations, false documentation included, Daud moves into the residential hall of the Academy of Natural Philosophy a mere two days before the start of the Feast. His client assumes the undocumented period of the year will be to Daud’s advantage and insists it’s no problem to rush things along, but it ends up being a hindrance instead. It’s just Daud’s luck that the year he’s boarded up in the Academy is a rare year when the moon doesn’t become entirely full until after the Month of Songs has ended and the Fugue Feast has begun.

As a supposed apprentice, Daud shares chambers with one other person, which complicates things further. His roommate doesn’t seem all that fussed about becoming good friends, at least. He barely acknowledges Daud when Daud brings in his few belongings and keeps to himself until offering to get breakfast with Daud the next morning.

His name is Daniel and his area of study is in medicine. It’s all Daud has to go on, but he doesn’t plan on staying at the Academy long enough for it to matter anyway.

After Daniel goes his own way, not bothering to invite Daud along which suits Daud just fine, Daud makes his way to the office of the Head of the Academy, who just so happens to be his client.

“Ah, Daud, good to see you have settled in alright,” Lewis Stanbury says airily as he gestures Daud inside and then closes the door behind him. “Let us get down to business.”

Daud seats himself when Stanbury offers him the chair across his desk and waits silently for the rest of the information he was promised.

“Roseburrow is already here,” Stanbury tells him. “He arrived last night as well. Today, he means to meet with one of our top physicians, Anton Sokolov, but Academy affairs will go on hold for the Fugue Feast at midnight. You should have plenty of time and opportunity to complete your job.”

He passes a few sheets of paper across the desk. “A map of the premises and a detailed schedule of events. The map will not gain you any unwarranted attention, but the schedule is more information than an apprentice has any need for, so take care.”

With a nod, Daud accepts the papers and looks over them briefly. It’s more than enough. “It will be handled before the Abbey announces the new year,” he says.

“Good man,” Stanbury replies, grinning widely.

It isn’t Daud’s place to question what his clients ask of him, but he is curious as to why the Head of the Academy would have one of his own potential colleagues killed before they have even had time to properly meet. This Roseburrow man has raised himself from nothing to Academy interest levels of prestige within the span of months, and someone like that seems mutually beneficial to anyone who can get on his good side.

Maybe it’s personal, and this goes beyond the coin that could be made with a partnership.

“I have work to do,” Daud says, standing. He tucks the papers into a pocket on the jacket Rulfio had claimed he needed to wear because it made him look more ‘scholarly’.

“Yes, of course,” Stanbury agrees and stands as well to show him out.

After exploring the building enough to study the best exits and vantage points, Daud finds his way to the laboratories where the professors do their work with state of the art tools and as many apprentices for assistance as they could want. Sokolov and Roseburrow are already speaking with each other in one of them, and Daud slips close to the wall next to the tall windows, looking in to see what they are doing.

At first, they only talk and Daud turns a sharp ear towards them to pick up parts of the conversation. Daud knows who Sokolov is. _Most_ people know who Sokolov is, either for his art or his work as a physician, and the man seems aware of it. He talks more and louder than Roseburrow does and he wouldn’t be difficult to eavesdrop on even for someone with average hearing.

Roseburrow, on the other hand, is more soft-spoken and new to this world he now shares with Sokolov. He sounds more excited to get to work for the sake of the work rather than to do it for the discoveries he can put to his name. This is in line with what Petro had told Daud about Roseburrow, having known him from the days when the man had haunted the whaling docks.

Finally, they start to work. Roseburrow has a beaker of luminescent whale oil that he does several small experiments with while Sokolov watches, marvelling at the amount of raw power that can be produced from such a small supply. Roseburrow’s company is already manufacturing small things with the oil such as lamps that take longer to burn out and heating plates that cook food faster. Daud can tell by the interested gleam in Sokolov’s eyes that he would aspire to create things much greater with that power.

He wonders, now, if the Academy means to take the man’s research for themselves once he’s dead. The man has had success, but he is still a fresh player.

Daud leaves them to it, no longer interested. He needs to get some sleep in preparation for the coming night and first day of the Fugue Feast when he’ll be shifting within Academy gates and will need to stay alert. He has time to deal with Roseburrow later.

 

The Academy gardens are expansive and impressive. On one end is a row of large greenhouses full of all the plants any philosopher might need while creating mixtures and doing experiments, and the rest is a well maintained and extravagant courtyard designed for special gatherings where philosophers and nobles meet and discuss how best they can make each other rich.

Daud finds himself a secluded corner behind tall hedges and hopes no one decides to go out for a late-night stroll. He would have preferred to shut himself in his chambers for the night, but Daniel remains on the premises, Fugue Feast aside. Most those employed or enrolled at the Academy seem to believe they have better things to do with their time than partake in debauchery, or at least, the senior philosophers do and the others take direction from them. Daniel had given him a knowing smirk when Daud told him he would be gone for the night, and Daud tries not to be annoyed by it.

The first part of the night goes by without incident; Daud can curb his wolf desire to run and hunt without much effort after all the moons he has been through, and he spends this one curled up in the grass with his senses on alert in case someone comes out into the gardens and he needs to move.

One moment he’s listening to the trickling of water in the fountain at the centre of the courtyard and the next he can hear crashing waves all around him as if he’s on a ship in the ocean.

Daud startles to awareness, raising up on four legs and taking a defensive stance. All he can smell is saltwater, all he can hear is the sea.

He’s on an island and the water laps right up to the pale stone of it, almost black in colour. There are carved steps, some of them slick with spray from the tumultuous water, and Daud cautiously ascends them onto the plateau above. The water rises with him and when he looks back at it, he can see the stairs have disappeared completely under black waves, trapping him entirely on the upper portion of the small island.

The Outsider – because Daud knows much about the Outsider and this could be no one else – appears out of coils of darkness. His skin is pale and the light on his black eyes looks like slicks of oil over dark water. He smiles with too many teeth, and he looks far too young to be an ancient deity, no older than Daud, at the mere age of twenty-five.

Daud dearly wishes he were in his human form for whatever is happening. Balance or poor luck, Daud thinks, whichever it is, he could do with less of it.

“Hello, Daud,” the Outsider says, still smiling with all those eerily white teeth. “Amazing what the pull of the moon can do to both man and sea, isn’t it?” He pauses and gestures at the high water around them.

The only reply Daud can make in this form is a low, warning, growl. He has read about the Outsider, has seen temples in Pandyssia with murals of the Outsider carved and painted beautifully into the stone, has wondered if his mother knew more about the Outsider than she ever had the time to tell him before he was taken from her. To say he was curious is an understatement, and getting to see and hear the god in person is fascinating and illuminating, but he feels vulnerable. Whatever the Outsider might want with him, Daud can handle it only as a werewolf.

The Outsider looks amused. “Yes, you do find yourself in such interesting positions, don’t you? The Academy of Natural Philosophy is hardly a new establishment and yet its sway is being felt in the city more now than ever before. The people within those walls will change the landscape of Dunwall in the years to come, and you, with training only in blood, have the power to decide who comes out on top. I look forward to seeing what path you take.

For your journey, I gift you with my mark.”

Daud’s left hand feels like it’s on fire. He can’t see what’s happening to it through his thick fur, but the sensation is like a knife carving symbols into his hidden flesh, lines and curves all intertwined until it stops abruptly. He doesn’t feel or smell blood; the only scent in the air is still saltwater and a faint ashy smell that reminds Daud of some of his mother’s potions.

“If you wish to expand the scope of the abilities I can grant you, seek out the old relics imbued with magic, lost and hidden runes carved from whalebone. Use your power now to find one.”

It’s all the deity offers before fading away into smoke again, leaving Daud alone on the small island surrounded by water.

Books tend to claim the Outsider is a serpent, scaly and sneaky, while the Pandyssian temples have all kinds of depictions from a massive whale-like sea creature to nothing but blue, glowing light. Maybe none of them can be proved wrong by this one encounter alone, but Daud has never heard of the Outsider appearing as a young man, before.

He also never would have expected the almost playful way the god speaks, not a malevolent puppeteer, but a watchful instigator.

It looks as though Daud has no choice but to play along or remain on the island in hopes that the tide might go down again, but Daud doesn’t think the normal rules of the world would apply here in the Void.

He digs down through the layer of his mind that is all wolf, wading into the new pool of power underneath, and his eyesight changes into shades of blue. In the low corner of his eye he spots a shape and he moves to the edge of the island, looking down straight at it.

In the distance, below a great amount of water, is a rune, emitting a hissing, crackling noise that Daud can hear faintly even from a distance and through the sea. He sighs, the noise coming out like a tired huff, and then he leaps into the water in pursuit of the rune.

When Daud wakes, he’s human and naked in the Academy gardens, the sun already rising in the sky. He curses and scrambles for his clothes, and doesn’t realise until he’s buttoning up his shirt that the Outsider’s mark, elegant and black, is tattooed to the back of his left hand for all the world to see.

_Thirty-seven years ago_

There is a song Daud’s mother sings sometimes, about beautiful women who live at the bottom of the sea and men who turn into beasts under the full moon and witches who draw on the power of the Void. She sings it while she works, pulling petals and thorns off of plants and churning them up together in a stone bowl. She sings it to him when she puts him to bed in the evenings. Daud thinks it must be her favourite.

“Have you met any of them?” he asks her one night when he’s laying in bed with the cotton sheets pulled up high and she’s sitting beside him humming the last notes of the song for him.

“Yes,” she answers, smiling down at him. “At sea, the women with the beautiful voices would call to the men on our ship. They would fall in love as soon as they heard them and would throw themselves overboard to be with them.”

Daud can’t imagine falling in love like that so easily. “Did you fall in love with them too?”

“They were beautiful,” his mother concedes, “but their voices only seduce men.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t want to lead the women to their deaths like they did the men. They only wanted genuine love from other women.”

“What happened to your crewmates, then?”

“They couldn’t hear the beautiful songs if they weren’t conscious, so I hit them on the back of their heads with bottles of ale,” his mother says, grinning.

Daud laughs as he imagines it, his mother saving her crew in such a silly way. He hopes they were all okay, but he also hopes the women in the sea found the genuine love they wanted.

“I want to meet them, too.”

“When you’re older, perhaps,” his mother says. She leans down to kiss him on the temple. “For now, go to sleep.”

Daud closes his eyes and dreams of the ocean. 

_Twelve years ago_

Very little happens in Dunwall anymore that Daud isn’t aware of now that he can have half a dozen sentries spread out across the major districts and with all the wealthy people who will pay great coin just to have their counterpart’s secrets stolen and revealed. For every assassination contract, Daud receives three others that are only for the exchange of information. None of them ever specify that Daud shouldn’t look at the letters and logbooks he’s stealing, so he helps himself to the information when it seems like something that would be a benefit to know.

He’s aware that a well known Morlish family has decided to make the move to Dunwall, perhaps allured by the spike in industry ever since Sokolov, the new Head of the Academy, and Roseburrow, the pioneer in whale oil productions, put their heads together, but Daud isn’t overly concerned about it at first. It’s just one more family trying to ascend to the top of the social and economic ladder in Dunwall just like all the rest.

All the same, he’s on the docks when the family arrives. The ship is massive, but Daud had guessed it would be when he snuck into the offices and noticed the docking roster had been shuffled so that only a couple fishing ships would also be in bay at the same time.

Two guards make the descent from ship to pier first, followed closely by Lord and Lady Weston. They look every bit the wealthy, stuck up type. Lord Weston has sharp, cold eyes that sweep across everyone and everything in sight with a judgemental air and Lady Weston turns her nose up and doesn’t even deign to give any of it the time of day. They’re prim and proper for having just finished such a long journey on a ship, but considering the vessel’s size, they must have had all the same luxuries they had back in Morley.

Behind them trails their young daughter, looking hardly older than twelve or thirteen. She keeps her head down and says nothing, only following her parents and waiting as they make arrangements.

Lord Weston is certainly high maintenance, ordering members of the Dunwall City Watch around as if he has any right to and he doesn’t have a whole host of workers filing off his ship behind him that he could give demands to instead. The docks guard detail takes it in stride, which is impressive. Daud would have already picked a fight if faced with someone so rude and snobby.

He tails their carriage as they travel to their new estate, a surprisingly modest home for a family like this, but he supposes with all the homegrown families already rooted in Dunwall, the property market is slim pickings. From a rooftop across the canal, Daud watches the flurry of activity as workmen cart in crate after crate of belongings and furniture.

Even from a distance, Daud’s hearing can pick up most of what happens below if he focuses enough. None of it is particularly interesting, until Daud hears a young, tentative voice ask, “What’s that man doing on the roof?”

Startled, Daud blinks behind the chimney, hiding from view just in time.

Lord Weston answers. “Don’t be ridiculous, girl. There’s no one up there. How about you go inside, your father is busy with more important things than your overactive imagination.”

“He was there, though,” his daughter insists. “But then he faded away, like magic.”

“Hush,” Lord Weston says, a warning tone in his voice. “Have you been reading your mother’s old books again? Do not say such things out loud. Go inside before you get underfoot.”

“Yes, father,” his daughter answers, dejectedly.

Daud lets out a breath and peeks around the side of the chimney again so he can watch as the younger Lady Weston disappears from view into the estate. She has a keen eye, that one, a talent that would suit her better in Daud’s line of work than her own father’s. As a family of researchers, a natural observation skill could come in handy, but Daud gets the impression that the immediate family does very little of their own work and Lord Weston is too in his own world to grasp at his daughter’s talent. It’s a waste. Someone will likely hire Daud to deal with such an aggravating man in the years to come and the poor girl will inherit a ruined legacy.

Lord Weston gets back to orchestrating the move in, going so far as to cross the canal to the workers bringing crates up from the boats at water level. When he’s directly below Daud, close enough that Daud’s senses can hone in, he picks up on a scent that entirely changes his interest in this previously unremarkable family.

Lord Weston is a werewolf. It’s unmistakable, and Daud isn’t the only one who notices there are two wolves in proximity.

Shoulders tense, Lord Weston turns and looks around the area, eyes narrowing into slits. Daud moves closer to the edge of the roof, standing up to his full height. This time, he won’t be hiding behind a chimney. There’s already a pack in Dunwall, and Lord Weston should be made aware of it.

Finally the man’s eyes lift up and catch sight of Daud. They hold each other’s gaze for a moment, Lord Weston still doing his best to look dangerous, and Daud doing nothing but letting himself be seen before blinking out of the man’s line of sight, disappearing like magic, as Lord Weston’s daughter had claimed.

 

“So, are we going to take him out?” Kent asks when Daud fills the pack in on what he’s learned.

The group of them are all fit into the living space of the main house. Misha, Javier, Scott, and Rulfio are jammed together on the couch with Daniel perched on the armrest, Anthony and Keiron are sitting on the floor together with their backs to the fire in the hearth, Kent is leaned up against the far wall with his arms crossed over his chest, and Petro and Fergus are standing to Daud’s left, completing the cramped, haphazard circle they all make.

“No, not when they’ve only just moved here,” Daud answers. “That would draw us a lot of attention.”

It has only been a couple years since the Watch raid drove them away from the heart of the city and into the rural outskirts. It puts them at a tactical disadvantage in terms of scouting the city, but many of them have found joy in being able to disappear into the forests during the full moon. Living across two small cottages on the edges of town gives them room to breathe, at least. Daud would rather they not have to find somewhere new so soon.

“Is he going to come after us?” Kieron asks, brow furrowed.

“He won’t succeed, if he does,” Misha cuts in. Beside her, Javier nods.

“We aren’t making plans, here,” Daud says. “I’m just giving you all the facts. If you’re scouting in the estate district, be careful and try not to get too close.”

“Would it really be so bad if he catches a whiff every so often?” Anthony says. “Let him know we have numbers, but leave it at that. He doesn’t need to know shit other than there’s a group of us and we were here first.”

Daud’s instincts align very much with what Anthony is suggesting, but he reels himself in. If he makes the mistake of letting the primal part of his mind overtake the logical part, it could mean danger for all of them and somehow he has a pack of ten to protect, now. If he were alone there wouldn’t be any question, but he needs to think like a leader.

“I want information on them first. We’ll decide what needs to be done when we know what we’re dealing with. We’ll give them time to settle their affairs and then I’ll go find out what I can.”

They’re all willing to accept that course of action and for the rest of the evening they put it to the back of their minds. Fergus and Kieron put together something for dinner and they all eat together, bantering and playing cards before the half of them that sleep in the second house take their leave in the evening.

Business is as usual for the coming week and Daud keeps an eye on the Weston estate himself while passing off a mission to Rulfio to handle in his stead. It isn’t the most riveting scouting he’s ever done. Despite his attitude, Lord Weston’s workers actually work very well and efficiently until all the affairs are well taken care of. Perhaps Lord Weston is a feared man. Perhaps his lycanthropy is known just widely enough to keep people in line.

Daud learns that it isn’t just Lord Weston, but all three of them that are werewolves. Still, the only one who ever manages to catch him watching is the daughter when one night she appears in her bedroom chamber windows and gazes out directly at him. She doesn’t look shocked or scared, she just stares and then a moment later disappears from sight. Daud uses his void gaze and watches her through the walls but all she does is curl up in a chair with a book until it’s time to sleep, apparently having learned not to bother her father with things he won’t believe coming from her anyway.

Near the end of the week, the Westons go out for the evening, having already managed to connect with another family and arrange a dinner party. Daud takes this opportunity to rifle through Lord Weston’s office, helping himself to his correspondences, account information, and research plans.

Lord Weston’s research is in animal biology. Daud snorts at the irony, but his mood turns darker when he sees some of the experiments the man has ordered. If he manages to get an audience with Anton Sokolov, the two of them will be kindred spirits, from what Daud can tell.

He puts everything back where he found it, but lingers in the room long enough that his scent should still be present the next time Lord Weston comes in to work. The more he finds out about this man, the more he wants there to be a confrontation. He can stay his hand until it’s safest for the pack, but he doesn’t see any harm in ruffling his fur before they get to that point.

Daud leaves the estate through the balcony and heads home, starting to think about how he wants to handle this situation.

 

Before they decide anything, there’s a full moon to get through. It’s early still in the Month of Wind but the weather is already turning steadily and the brisk air tends to get the pack eager for their warm wolf forms, choosing more often to stay huddled together through the night than to separate into groups and pairs. Daud never tells them where they can’t go or what they can’t do; the full moon isn’t a time for orders and as long as they have a handle on their control, Daud doesn’t care what they get up to. All the same, in the middle months when winter hits, the instinct to be safer together is strong. Most of them will be heading out together, leaving only Fergus and Daud behind.

It has been a personal choice of Daud’s not to give the bite to anyone under eighteen, giving them more time to back out if necessary. At barely sixteen, Fergus is still too young so Daud stays back too. The two of them see the pack off in the evening, watching them walk down the road into the wild brush that surrounds the land bound sides of Dunwall.

There’s a faint dejected look on Fergus’ face when they step back inside. Talk of an invading pack seems to have rekindled his resentment at being the only one without the bite and it shows when Daud looks for it.

“You will be able to join them in a couple years,” Daud tells him.

“Years,” Fergus repeats, groaning, sounding so young and impatient.

Daud goes back into the living room and claims the old armchair, waiting for Fergus to follow. Fergus sits down in the middle of the couch, pulling his legs up and replacing his sketchbook on his lap, but looking too unfocused to go back to his drawing.

“I was turned when I was your age,” Daud says. “I wasn’t prepared for it, but it wasn’t up to me. I won’t put you all through that, do you understand?”

Fergus pouts a little but eventually nods. Daud figures his eagerness is based on needing to feel like he belongs in a family unit after losing both his parents and his older brother only a year before. The wound is raw and he still watches Keiron and Anthony closely and warily even though the two of them ran from the Abbey years ago and probably share both Fergus’ and Daud’s feelings about the cult of Whitecliff. Matters might have come to violence if not for the calm, genuine way Keiron had approached Fergus about his and Anthony’s past in the interest of not upsetting the new recruit when the information came up later. Keiron has the most level head of all of them.

Later, when the shift approaches, Daud puts down his book and leaves the room to change, taking slow, deep breaths. He never used to care about the pain that accompanied it, but with a pack of his own now that sometimes includes younger members, he puts an effort into showing that is doesn’t have to hurt or signal a loss of humanity, if the person can relax through it and let their body familiarise itself with its new nature.

Fergus has never been shy our nervous about spending full moons with Daud or any of the others, and Daud supposes it’s a testament to how much he genuinely wants to turn that several months of hearing Daud’s bones stretch hasn’t deterred him. Daud is still surprised that ten out of ten of them have wanted this, but maybe the power of it is more alluring when it is offered as a choice.

Once the shifting stops, Daud returns to his chair and curls up in it as a great wolf, laying his head down over the armrest. After things settle, Fergus becomes largely disinterested and finally goes back to sketching, having grown completely unconcerned by sharing a space with a werewolf over the past few months.

In the distance, they can hear the howls of their pack out in the wild.

Then, there’s a howl that doesn’t belong to any of them. Daud lifts his head, huge ears turned towards the source of what can only belong to one of the Westons, except it sounds wrong.

It doesn’t sound like a call that urges the rest of the pack to answer, nor just a light expression of instinct or the surge in power one feels under the moon. It sounds pained and strangled and not at all natural.

“Who… who is that?” Fergus asks, fear in his eyes. He must be imagining one of the pack getting hurt, maybe losing another older sibling.

Daud shakes his head, though there’s no way for him to communicate properly while in wolf form. He jumps down off the chair and makes for the front door. He gestures with his head for Fergus to come with him.

“Are you sure?”

Daud huffs lowly and waits for Fergus to scramble up and follow him outside.

As they’re traversing the garden to the road, the terrible howl comes again and Fergus startles at first, but then Daud watches approvingly as he furrows his brow in attentiveness.

“Wait, that’s coming from the city, not the forest, isn’t it?”

Daud nods and leads the way down the road towards the edge of the Draper’s ward. He picks up the pace to a jog and Fergus runs beside him, smelling of sweat and anticipation.

In the city, they have to stay in dark, back streets and they’re spotted by the homeless and late night drinkers more than once, but Daud moves too fast to be properly seen when he needs to, darting into alleys and behind dumpsters until Fergus catches up and they can move on.

The howling gets louder the closer they get to the Estate district, as Daud expected it would. He isn’t sure what Lord Weston is playing at, allowing such a racket in the heart of the city. Most might miss it entirely in their sleep or think it a wild dog in a fight, but it could just as easily raise some suspicion.

They avoid the gate entrance to the district and sprint down to the canal. Fergus shivers just from looking at the dark water, but he doesn’t complain, and they swim the rest of the way towards the Weston property.

The guard detail is strong and Daud’s handle on his abilities from the Outsider is shaky and mostly useless in this form. His mark is present but obscured under the fur of his paw, and the pool of power deep inside of him that comes from the Void is still there, but it comes secondary from the draw of the moon.

“I could sneak in,” Fergus says quietly, crouched beside Daud and dripping water onto the stone steps.

Daud growls. Fergus is still a novice in addition to not being a werewolf yet and Daud doesn’t generally send novices anywhere alone, especially not the well-guarded home of a rival family. He may not smell like a wolf himself but he still reeks of the pack whether he took an impromptu bath in the canal or not and will be detected just as easily as any of them.

He herds Fergus up into the street and towards the small gap between two buildings where they can watch in relative safety.

Blessedly, the howling stops for a time and Daud almost thinks that’s the end of it and they should head home, even if he’s desperate to know what has been happening behind the closed doors of the Weston estate.

Fergus seems to disagree. He fidgets, bouncing his legs and rustling his hair to get it to dry faster as they wait and Daud can tell that what he really wants to do is jump into action.

Luckily, the streets of the Estate district are fairly bare, with less of a street presence and an overall lower population than districts where residents are piled in on top of each other in never-ending cramped apartments. Daud emerges from the alley carefully and leads the way around the perimeter of the property until they come to a workshop at the back where the sounds are louder. Now, if Daud strains, he can make out voices that sound like they’re coming from below the ground.

He can hear the tapping of an impatient foot and the scratching of a pen on parchment, but most of all he can hear whimpering. The wolf that had howled in agony is still suffering, just quieter. Daud knows it’s too much to ask that it be Lord Weston himself struggling with a particularly painful shift. He thinks of the man’s daughter, seen but not heard and going where she’s asked. The whimpers are high pitched, young sounding.

Daud growls low in his throat, making Fergus jump.

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” Fergus says hurriedly. “You said no, so I wasn’t going to.”

Regretting that he can’t simply tell Fergus he isn’t the source of his ire, Daud can only place a paw on Fergus’ arm and press his muzzle against Fergus’ cheek as comfortingly as he can and hope the message gets across.

“Okay,” Fergus says, breath hitching before he lets out an involuntary laugh. “That tickles. Did you hear something?”

Daud pulls away and nods. If he crosses into the property while shifted like this it’s as good as starting a gang war and people will get hurt, but it’s a difficult urge to subdue. This will end in violence, but not on this night when there are still unknowns and Fergus is his only backup. Daud is going to be fully prepared, first.

He huffs at Fergus and then pads through the alley that takes them back down to the canal.

“We’re coming back later, then?” Fergus asks.

Daud nods and leaps into the water.

Back at home, he prods Fergus towards the second house, the one that he lived in with his parents before Daud and the others moved in across the street.

“Is this your way of telling me it’s time to go to bed?” Fergus asks, sighing.

Daud’s only response is to keep herding him inside. Fergus must be tired after their exciting excursion because he doesn’t put up a fight before going upstairs. Daud listens to him hang up his damp clothes and finally get in bed, then he stays on guard at the front of the house until the pack comes home; Javier, Misha, Scott, and Kent to Fergus’ place and the others to the main house. They’ll sleep through the first half of the day and get to planning when they’re all rested.

 

The Outsider visits Daud in his dreams, as he does so often these days.

“When was the last time you set out to kill for something other than coin?” the Outsider muses, but he isn’t looking for an answer. “This one is personal.”

The Outsider curls his fingers under Daud’s chin and regards him with gleaming black eyes full of interest, lips curled into a grin that shows just a hint of sharp teeth. His hands are freezing cold, a sharp contrast to Daud’s unnatural warmth.

“Is this _righteousness_ , Daud?” he teases lightly. “How curious.”

Daud leans up to kiss him, half because he craves the contact and half to stop the Outsider from saying anything else that will send him into a spiral of introspection. The Outsider chuckles under his lips, understanding his motivation full well, but allowing it.

 

“Rulfio, Daniel, and Keiron, go look through the workshop at the back of the estate. The rest of you spread out along the rooftops and wait for instruction or a signal. If it comes to a fight, remember that we’re dealing with someone with the same supernatural senses as we have. Watch each other’s backs.” He thinks for a moment, eyes on the estate across the canal until he looks to Rulfio with Daniel and Keiron moving to bracket him on either side. “If Lord Weston himself runs interference, leave him to me and regroup.”

There are a few nods and ‘yes sirs’ and then they all blink away to their tasks or posts.

Daud himself heads for the gardens, climbing up onto the gate that surrounds the property. The youngest Weston is doing what appears to be schoolwork at a small round table in the courtyard. There are only two guards on watch, one at the door that leads inside and another on the balcony above. Daud goes for the one on the balcony first and then blinks down to get the second, dumping his body along with the other on the balcony where they won’t be discovered until later. A quick sweep with void gaze shows that there’s no one else in the area, not even inside the building.

Weston’s daughter’s eyes widen when Daud appears before her, but as usual, she doesn’t look scared.

“Good morning, Lady Weston,” Daud says and pulls out the chair opposite her to sit down as non-threatening as he can.

Her eyes narrow into a squint instead, going cold. “Don’t call me ‘Lady’,” she says.

Daud shrugs. Of all the reactions or demands she could have upon his appearance, asking him to drop formalities isn’t bad. It’s actually impressive she hadn’t just begun to scream for the guards and ask him what he wants from her.

“Alright. What would you have me call you instead?”

She hesitates for a moment, watching him sharply as if trying to read his thoughts. Instead of answering, she says, “Are you here to fight? I heard my father yelling to my mother about how you already broke into our property before. He wanted to track you, but she convinced him to be sensible and wait until you came back so there would be no doubt that you attacked first and were at fault.”

Daud raises an eyebrow. That’s a fair amount of free information, considering he hadn’t meant to interrogate her at all, only gauge how she might factor into this whole ordeal.

“Sounds like you overhear a lot of things you shouldn’t.”

“If Lord Weston didn’t want a wolf child who could overhear his affairs, he shouldn’t have had children at all.”

The kid is smart, and doesn’t mince her words. Daud likes her. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen,” she says. “Why?”

“You’re sharper than a blade, both your mind and your tongue. What are you working on?” he asks, nodding at her worksheets.

“Balancing formulas. It’s just practice.”

Some of it makes sense to Daud between the reading he’s done and what he saw and studied while at the academy a few years past. There were people in their 20s doing similar equations. “What’s this one?” Daud asks, gesturing at a sheet half hidden under the others.

The girl frantically moves to cover it up all the way. “Nothing. Something for free time only.”

“You’re doing your own formulas?”

“No,” she says, which is a blatant lie but she offers nothing more on the matter and looks uncomfortable so Daud drops it.

Back to the matter at hand. “Do you have any other family? Here or back in Morley.”

If she’s surprised that he knows where her family is from, she doesn’t show it. “An uncle in Morley. I don’t like him.”

Daud hums thoughtfully. “How do you like your mother?”

The girl shrugs.

“Not good either, hm?”

He gets no response or reaction but that gives him an answer just as well. “Do you know why I’m asking?”

She purses her lips in thought, looking conflicted. “I have a theory, but it doesn’t make sense.”

“What’s the theory?”

“I’m only thirteen and if you kill my parents, their assets will be seized by the state until I’m old enough, assuming they’ve bothered to do the proper documentation, which they probably haven’t.”

Daud can’t help but grin, impressed, even if the facts themselves aren’t pleasant. “How doesn’t that make sense?”

“Because you don’t care about any of that,” she answers without pause.

The grin falls from Daud’s face. There’s a certainty in her tone that speaks to years of being taught that the world is a cold, uncaring place where the only reason people associate with others is a matter of gain. Daud knows that sentiment well. He thinks of the howls coming from below this estate, glances down at the formulas being balanced on thin parchment, and Weston’s fortune made on animal testing.

A growl rises in Daud’s throat and if he didn’t have years of experience and absolute control of himself even when the moon is still within a week of it’s fullest state, his nails would be sharpening into claws and scratching up the metal surface of the table between him and a thirteen-year-old born werewolf who has never known a proper pack bond.

The girl leans away from him a little, but she still doesn’t look as scared as Daud thinks she has every right to be.

“Would you be happier without all of this?” Daud asks, gesturing to the large, opulent house beyond the garden where they sit. “Even if you could never come back to it later.”

“Happier?” she asks. She chews her lip for a moment before continuing. “Would you call me Thomas, if I asked you to?”

“Thomas?” Daud questions, frowning. “That’s a--”

“A boy’s name. I’m a boy.”

Daud considers her – him – in surprise. For once he isn’t sure how to respond to that but Thomas sounds steadfast on the matter and Daud hasn’t forgotten the ice in his voice after being referred to as a lady. It doesn’t matter whether he understands or not, he realises, this boy knows his own business better than anyone and deserves to be treated with respect and consideration for once.

“Thomas, then. There are eleven of us and we kill and gather information for money. We live in a couple tiny cottages that could probably fit in the same space as your front foyer.”

Everything about Thomas softens, his eyes becoming gentle and shoulders relaxed. “I am good at information.”

“I wouldn’t ask anything of you until you’re older and you’ve had the right training for what role fits you best.”

Thomas shrugs. “Okay. Who hired you to kill my parents?”

Daud stands up. “I wasn’t hired, this one is on me. Pack some of your things. Bring this with you,” he adds, pushing Thomas’s worksheets to uncover the personal project he’d hidden before. “We have an ex-philosopher of the academy among us, if you would like someone to bounce ideas off of.”

Thomas looks shocked, but only nods before gathering the papers and heading inside.

And now it’s Daud’s job to take out the last of the Westons.

The conversation with Thomas had lasted longer than he expected, and the pack is waiting for him across the canal. Petro, Javier, Anthony, and Fergus are still patrolling across the rooftops to keep an eye on the place from all sides and Daud decides to leave them to it, just to avoid any unwelcome surprises. Rulfio reports back on the workshop and what he found is all very sickening and only makes Daud more eager to get started.

“We heard him moving in just as we were finished looking around and we got out of there, he’s probably still there trying to figure out what we were doing,” Rulfio finishes. “After seeing his trial notes, it was very hard not to disobey your order to regroup, sir.”

Daud snorts. The sentiment doesn’t surprise him and he knows Rulfio doesn’t actually mean anything mutinous. “Let’s not waste any more time, then.”

Lord Weston hears them coming. Daud picks up on him calling for the guards even before he, with Rulfio, Misha, Scott, Kent, and Kieron in tow, descends the stairs into the underground level of the workshop. No matter how many guards the man calls, the pack will cut them down.

Misha and Kent dart forward on either side of him to engage the front guard, both of them with enough lifelong experience to handle themselves in a fight alone against five, if need be. Misha has fought multiple targets simultaneously with more expertise than any common guardsman and come away bloody and victorious. Kent was conceived on a ship just as Daud was and has sunk entire ships at sea with his crewmates. Rulfio and Scott learned on the streets until training with Daud since they were teenagers and Kieron survived the Trials of Aptitude. Through the pack bond he can feel them all, in case something goes wrong, but nothing will. He doesn’t have to worry about any of them.

He focuses his attention on Lord Weston, hiding behind his guards.

“What kind of wolf cowers behind humans?” Daud snarls, stalking towards him.

Lord Weston draws a pistol, but it’s easy to track where he’s aiming and move before the shot has been fired. The sound of it rings loudly within the walls of the workshop which is momentarily debilitating, but it must hurt to Lord Weston’s ear most of all and was a foolish move on his part.

“You’re a savage,” Lord Weston spits as Daud closes in and swings at his pistol arm. He pulls away and draws his sword instead to block Daud’s next attack that goes right for his throat. “Do you know how many laws you have broken? You trespass, you assault my guards, you--”

Daud laughs in his face. He keeps the pressure on with his blade, forcing Lord Weston on the defensive, but the man isn’t as fast as he should be, is untrained and sloppy and has no control over his own supernatural strength, and this fight isn’t going to last long at all. Daud had almost hoped Weston would be a challenge just so he could die slow.

“You haven’t been in Dunwall long, I’ll give you that,” Daud says. “Your ignorance can be overlooked.”

He spins away from Lord Weston, exposing his back but not worried about it, and raises his left hand. His mark flairs bright, hot white as he tethers a guardsman from behind, reeling him in backwards and shoving his sword in through the man’s back. He wrenches downwards, cutting a long swath through his torso and then dropping the body on top of his own spilling innards.

When Daud turns back around again, Lord Weston is looking at him in horror.

“Do you see how little I care for your accusations of trespassing?”

“A monster _and_ a heretic,” Lord Weston says. “You’re beyond any cure.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing down here?” Daud asks, gesturing at all the instruments and tools and vials of liquids standing in trays. “Is that the cause you deem important enough to hurt your own son for?”

Lord Weston sneers at him, opening his mouth to retort, but then something over Daud’s shoulder catches his gaze. Daud focuses his scenes and hears the light footsteps on the stairs that belong to a child and picks up the scent of another werewolf that doesn’t belong to his own pack.

“That worthless girl,” Lord Weston starts, but his words turn to wet gurgles as Daud drives his sword through his throat.

With all his strength, Daud pushes back until the tip of his sword imbeds itself in the brick wall behind them, leaving Lord Weston speared in place.

It can take a lot to kill a werewolf completely. Lord Weston’s weapons clatter to the floor as he makes to grasp at Daud’s blade instead, still convulsing and gasping around the intrusion and the gush of blood. If he had the strength and leverage to free himself, maybe he could have enough time to heal before he suffocated, drowning in his own blood, but he won’t make it that far. Daud watches him as he struggles helplessly with the last of his life.

When the man ceases to move, Daud pulls his blade back and lets the body crumple to the floor.

The others have finished with the guards, creating quite a macabre scene, but none of them seem to be hurt. On the way to the stairs where Thomas waits for them, Daud overturns the table that houses all of Lord Weston’s mixtures, spilling the contents on the bloody floor.

The sentry group is waiting for them in the front yard and a corpse in wolf form is laying on the grass between them. Daud looks to Javier for a report.

“Lady Weston,” Javier explains. “She tried to alert the street patrol Watchmen and made a stand when we stopped her.”

Daud nods. The job is done, then. They’ve left quite a mess but the Westons still have few friends in Dunwall and it could be some time before any of the Watch come to investigate. “Let’s get home.”

As soon as the word is given, Javier hurries to Misha’s side and Kieron and Anthony take off together.

“Hey there, Thomas,” Rulfio says to their new recruit as the rest of them move out to the street.

Thomas blinks up at him as if surprised at being spoken to so casually and softly, and with his chosen name. “Hi,” he says.

“Do you mind if I carry you back to base? We’re all kind of covered in blood so we shouldn’t just walk in case we’re seen and…”

“Like magic,” Thomas says.

“Yeah, like magic.”

“Okay,” Thomas agrees and lets Rulfio wrap his arms around him.

Rulfio shares a glance with Daud, communicating that he knows to be careful, before blinking up to the rooftops with Thomas in tow. The others follow and then Daud brings up the rear, keeping an eye on all of them ahead as they travel back home.

_Twenty-six years ago_

“Are you scared?”

His master’s hand on the back of his neck as they move along the forest path is almost the gentle, guiding touch of a father to a son, encouraging him forward, but Daud can only think of it as a restraint. A warning not to run.

“No,” Daud answers, keeping his eyes on the path ahead instead of looking at the man who has controlled his life for years. He isn’t as rash and naïve as he was when he was first taken and he has learned some self-preservation, but he still refuses to think of his master like family, he still draws a hard line and lets his contempt brew under the surface.

“Perhaps you should be,” his master says. “It will hurt. What do you think of that?”

They arrive at a clearing and his master guides him into the centre before turning to face him head on, still waiting expectantly for an answer. They’ve come far away from town, to the middle of nowhere. At first Daud thought it was to keep them from hurting people, but _not_ hurting people has never been the goal before. Out here, to run is to be easily hunted. There is no one and nothing but trees to get in his way if it comes down to a chase, but Daud still knows better than to try. He’d been a child and on attempt number three when he came to the conclusion that his captor had an advantage over him that made even hiding in a crowd next to futile. In an empty forest, there are even fewer conflicting scents and sounds to mask him than there are in the city.

Daud only shrugs in response before remembering he is expected to be mannerly. “I can handle the pain.”

“You can, can’t you? Been awhile since you cried, hasn’t it?”

Daud grits his teeth. His master likes to remind him of old weaknesses even when so much time has passed. It has been seven or eight years since he was taken, he thinks. He has grown up and endured his training and he doesn’t cry anymore. He’d cried a lot at first, scared and missing his mother, but he’d learned not to let his emotions overcome him very early on.

“This will push you to your limits, however,” his master continues. “It would be okay if you cried.”

It wouldn’t be, and they both know it. It’s never okay to show weakness unless he wants to be hurt more. _If you’re going to cry, I’ll give you a real reason to do so_ , he’d been told as a child.

“As long as you don’t run. That would make you prey, and you know what predators do to prey. You’re an adult now, which means it’s time for you to become the predator. So, you do not run, you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Daud answers. He has dreaded his sixteenth year but there is no way to slow time so it had come and passed and now he’s old enough to be turned. He doesn’t want to become a monster like his master, doesn’t want to lose control of himself at the whim of the cosmos. He can hurt people with a blade just fine, he doesn’t get why he needs claws too.

The sky begins to darken as night settles in, not quite dark enough to start feeling cold, but Daud can’t suppress a shiver all the same.

His master chuckles. “Sure you aren’t scared, kid?”

He reaches for Daud, one hand gripping his arm and the other landing on his opposite shoulder. It feels gentle and caring, but Daud knows it isn’t genuine, or at least, it isn’t a good kind of caring. He was young, but he still remembers his mother, remembers how warm she was and the way she smoothed down his hair with calloused fingers and kissed him on the forehead, smelling like flowers and oil. Thoughts of his mother have been the only thing keeping him from letting himself be broken down the way his master wants.

“We’ll be truly family now, Daud, I’m going to keep looking after you like I always have. We’ll be bound by blood and power. You can’t understand the strength of the pack bond until you feel it yourself. You will never find a family or have a home other than this, it will be all you need.”

Secretly, Daud worries his master is being completely honest, rather than just trying to control him with fear. He worries that as soon as he’s bitten, he’ll forget all the reasons he hates the man and hates his training and hates being trapped. He still wants to escape, he just hasn’t come up with a plan that will definitely work yet, and now it might be too late. Maybe after this night, he won’t care anymore.

“You have permission to speak,” his master says when Daud takes too long to reply. His hands are still on Daud and he pulls Daud in almost as if he means to embrace him, but doesn’t. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Daud.”

If this is his last chance to be as defiant as he feels, Daud would rather incite his master’s anger and accept the consequences than go down without a fight. “You say you know the pack bond, but you have no pack. It’s just you.”

His master smiles but his eyes are cold. “They weren’t as strong as you are. I have full faith in your ability to succeed where they all failed.”

Daud feels sick to his stomach and briefly hopes that he does fail and when his master moves on without him, he’ll become another nameless entity of the past that no longer matters because he didn’t amount to anything. He could greet the void willingly.

But only briefly. His anger always wins.

“I will succeed,” he says. Or die trying. “You’ve trained me for years.”

“And you have learned well,” his master replies, looking pleased.

He moves away to circle around the clearing and stretch his limbs, finally leaving Daud in peace. Normally, he’s a very still, quiet person, but on the night of the full moon he grows agitated and Daud can tell he’s brimming with energy. Soon, Daud will share that same power, and for the first time, he thinks he knows what he wants to do with it.

Ever since finding out about his master’s lycanthropy and knowing what that meant for his own future, he has only ever been angry and nervous in turns, assuming he will have no choice in the matter. Now that the time has come, the anxiety is replaced by something else. His master tells him he won’t have control, tells him their pack bond will be unquestionable. Daud is ready to test that.

It becomes completely dark save for the moon’s light and Daud’s chest starts to tighten with unease against his will, but he doesn’t move and his resolve doesn’t fracture.

His master ceases his pacing, tensing up, and there’s a sickening, horrifying sound of limbs being stretched in impossible ways, of bones morphing and rearranging. He howls as his form grows in front of Daud’s wide eyes, no longer sounding like anything Daud has ever heard before. Up until this point, he’d always been left at home during the moon.

His clothes tear and fall away as his body is covered in a pale blonde coat of fur, a similar shade to the moonlight shining through the leaves above them, looking sleek and shiny. Daud watches as the man is completely replaced by wolf. When the shift is over, the monster moves towards him with heavy footfalls and a low, dangerous snarl.

Daud knows what is coming next but he holds his ground. The wolf opens his enormous maw full of long, sharp teeth and clamps down on Daud’s shoulder, tearing the fabric of his shirt. Daud cries out; it hurts like being stabbed with several knives all at once and his wide eyes lock fearfully onto his master’s. They’re bright red and look rabid. Daud’s blood now stains his muzzle, red just like his eyes.

The beast releases him and starts to prowl around him, watching him curl in on himself and shiver from the pain and the cold night air.

Daud doesn’t cry. It takes excruciatingly long for the bite to change him, leaving him gasping and shaking on the forest floor for what feels like hours as fire courses through him from his shoulder down to all his limbs. It’s only after that when the actual shift comes.

His body grows and realigns and his human mind starts to struggle to stay forefront, but he holds onto it through the pain. He wants to remember and he wants to be in control. He can smell and hear everything and it threatens to be so overwhelming he has to let his humanity slip out to make room, but then he replays his master’s words in his head, _you will never find a family you will never have a home_ , and he grips on tight.

By the time the shift is done, his mind is half primal instinct and half rage and hatred. He growls at the wolf before him, bigger and more monstrous than himself still, but Daud knows what to do when his opponents are bigger than he is. They’re also usually slower, usually too self-confident, too sure of their own power to even think someone would give up on running and go for the throat instead.

If there truly is an undeniable bond between packmates, Daud doesn’t give it any time to set in. After, he pads out of the clearing alone, feeling satisfied and with blood matting his fur.

_Now_

The Flooded District is both the best and the worst place for a werewolf to spend the full moon during the days of plague. There are no open green spaces, there is no room to run or wildlife to hunt, but what they do have is all their own. Weepers are too slow to be a threat and the plague rats skitter away from their hulking forms and there is no living soul left to care about unearthly beasts prowling through crumbling buildings.

The district had begun to flood long before Daud killed the Empress, but it may not have fallen so low into the ruined dumping ground that is it if she were still alive and directing the effort to eradicate the plague. The decimation of the Flooded District is largely on the shoulders of Hiram Burrows, which means it is largely on the shoulders of Daud himself.

Daud doesn’t feel like stalking through the watery streets and abandoned buildings of the district, but he does crave the open air, so he takes the back exit out of his office to cross into the carved open building behind it. The last of the ceiling had fallen in a week ago and the place looks gutted, but it makes for a good place to lay down under the moon without going too far from home.

It's a good place to look down on the corpse of a city, rotting and decomposing and falling away into bare bones.

He has no one to blame but himself, but it still hurts.

He howls, loud and long, and nobody will hear it. The district is largely empty, except for the few people in this city Daud really cares about, ones he doesn’t want to see him waver and falter. He howls anyway, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

It doesn’t make him feel particularly better, not that he expected it to. But then a call comes back, from somewhere on the other side of the Commerce building, the whaler unseen but close by. Others quickly follow it and Daud listens, rapt, to all their voices overlaying each other.

Rulfio is the first to actually find him still laying on the dusty wooden floor of the ruined building. He pads across the walkways towards him, circles around, and flops down behind him. He curls up close and lays his long snout over Daud’s side.

Daud makes a grumbling noise at him but it only makes Rulfio lean his weight heavier on Daud, practically nestled into his fur. Daud doesn’t argue again.

Thomas and Petro come next, and then Quinn, and Devon, and Ardan with young Walter huddled close to her, still human but unafraid. Others take longer and come with damp fur and the scent of oil surrounding them suggesting they had strayed far into the district but returned at the call, even though Daud hadn’t meant for it to be a summons.

Since the plague struck, their numbers have grown by a lot, filling their ranks with young, orphaned novices who haven’t been bitten yet, but they come up from their rooms in the Commerce building to join the pack, anyway. Daud starts to fear that the rickety floor of the building will give way underneath the great pile of them.

Billie is one of the last to join them and she looks uncharacteristically hesitant. She takes in the sight of all of them and then slowly comes forward, stepping over Jordan and Tynan to park herself right in front of Daud, leaving the others to shift so there’s room.

She smells off to Daud’s nose, the electric tang of anxiety mixed with thick anger. She isn’t usually the type to exude strong emotional reactions at all, and never anything resembling anxiety, but times have been different these last few months, in a way they aren’t accustomed to. This isn’t an Overseer raid or a rival pack, this isn’t just their corner of the city that’s shifting, it’s the entire landscape, and Daud has been letting them sink.

Daud lays a paw over one of hers and tries to communicate with a look, red eyes to golden, that he’ll do better from here on out. Billie sniffs at him and then lays her head down over their combined paws, closing her eyes and starting to relax.

Something slots into place inside Daud’s head, making him feel more grounded than he has since killing Empress Jessamine. Even if the city never recovers and wastes away into nothing, the whalers will still be here. They’re immune to plague and hard to kill and even if they’re the last beings alive in Dunwall by the end of this, they’ll still be a pack.

But Jessamine doesn’t have to be the last of Dunwall. Daud still knows who has the heir to the throne and he knows the Royal Protector is yet to be executed and he knows there’s a coalition forming because disgraced Admirals and expelled natural philosophers don’t just disappear into quarantined districts together without whaler scouts noticing.

Plans can wait for the morning. For now, Daud follows Billie’s example and lays his head down to rest, at ease amidst his family.


End file.
